Gonzalez v. Roman Catholic Archbishop’s Empirical Analysis
280 U.S. 1 · 1929
Citation profile
95 federal appellate · 30 district · 244 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 487 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for United States and Canada v. Milivojevich (1976), Presbyterian Church in US v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church (1969)
95 federal appellate · 30 district · 244 state decisions — followed in 32 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Watson v. Jones · Engel v. Walsh · Municipality of Ponce v. Roman Catholic Apostolic Church in Porto Rico · 3 E.H. Smith 401 - People Ex Rel. Johnson v. New York Produce Exchange
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 487 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In the absence of fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness, the decisions of the proper church tribunals on matters purely ecclesiastical, although affecting civil rights, are accepted in litigation before the secular courts as conclusive, because the parties in interest made them so by contract or otherwise.”
30 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“not even a suggestion that (the Archbishop) exercised his authority (in making the chaplaincy decision) arbitrarily,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“There is jurisdiction of the subject-matter; for the petitioner's claim is, in substance, that he is entitled to the relief sought as the beneficiary of a trust.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.